Ariana Franklin - Grave Goods aka Relics of the Dead

It was a large entrance, but if Brother Titus had used its passage to go to and fro, his bulk must have been mightily squeezed, for almost immediately the walls narrowed and lowered, enclosing them in a space little more than four feet square that, as far as they could see, went on and on. They were forced to bend double-Rowley was almost crawling, and Adelia had to take the lantern, maneuvering past him into the lead. Every thirty yards or so the tunnel widened into niches, vital for allowing a strained back to gain respite. Rowley ignored them. “Get on, get on, woman. Go faster.” He was panting. So was she.

Whoever had built the tunnel had been a craftsman; arched stones enclosed them on either side. Head bent, Adelia saw little except the mud of the floor as her boots squelched through it.

How far? Jesus, how far now? She’d lost all sense of direction and time. She was choking on her own breath. She gasped for the fresh air that was somewhere above her, the heavens impervious to the poor mice scuttling along their underground tube.

At one point, she thought she heard footsteps and imagined they were Godwyn’s or Hilda’s, running to block the other end of the tunnel against them. It was the thud of her own heart in her ears. We’re too far down to hear anything else, she thought, and began to choke again. She slowed, and Rowley’s head butted into her, the jolt nearly sending the lantern out of her hand so that she had to clasp it with the other to stop it from falling, burning her fingers on it. Oh, God, to be down here without light…

At the next niche she stopped and sat down to gain some breath, straightening her back and sucking her scorched fingers. Rowley peered at her. “Move, woman, move.”

“You go on,” she said. “I’ve got to rest.”

He collapsed beside her-the tunnel’s lack of height had made it harder going for him even than for her. He was looking at the lantern’s candle that had burned hideously low, then shifted with discomfort. “Hello, what’s this?”

He produced what he’d sat on-a plain deal box secured by a prong through a hasp. “I think we’ve discovered where our innkeeper and wife keep their treasures.”

She took the box. It rattled. Something of Emma’s might be hidden inside. But prong and hasp were so rusted together that she couldn’t open it.

Rowley grew impatient. “Let’s sit here and examine the contents, shall we? Come on.”

Clutching the box, she followed him, like Eurydice hastening after Orpheus, remembering that, at the last, Eurydice had been condemned to stay in the Underworld, never to see daylight again.

It was taking too long; if there was an end to this bestial tunnel, Godwyn and Hilda had reached it first and entombed them in it as they had Emma, Pippy and Roetger.

“What is it?” In front of her, Rowley was cursing.

“I left my bloody sword in that bloody cellar. I put it down to pick up a bottle.”

“I’ve got mine.” She’d been tempted to throw it away; the damn thing attached to the string round her waist kept bumping against her legs.

“ Lot of good that bloody rusty thing is.”

It killed a man, she thought. God, don’t let me think about that now.

So far, at least, there was no sign that three prisoners had ever been down here. Had Millie tricked them? No. Or if she had, she’d suffered for it-the girl hadn’t feigned unconsciousness; there’d been no trickery there. She’d been felled by that madwoman like a sapling under the ax.

A madwoman. Up there. Shutting them in.

Adelia began to pray in time to her shuffling, splashing feet, “Almighty Lord, save us. Save us, O Almighty Lord, of Thy great mercy, save us,” to a God Who, for her, automatically encompassed the Judaism and Christianity of her foster parents and something of Mansur’s Allah.

It had come naturally to her as a child that the faith of three beloved worshippers must reach the same deity with the accord that they gave one another. She could do no less now as she stumbled and ached and sobbed for breath. Theology was beyond her; so, almost, was thought, only a plea for help that went lancing upward through the earth to the stars: “Save us.”

All light had diminished except for the lantern that dragged along the ground in Rowley’s hand ahead of her. Help was restricted to the edge of his cloak, where she clutched it. All at once, the image of his naked body in bed came to her so strongly that she was stabbed with lust and, if that was profanity at this desperate moment, she couldn’t help it because here, in extremis, it was too sweet to surrender. I have loved him, he has loved me, and that is something, dear God, it is something.

As if the thought had power, the ceiling began to rise so that her man could stand up straight, and she with him.

Now the tunnel was sloping upward, culminating in steps that led to a ceiling. Rowley took them at a run that pulled his cloak out of her grasp.

Adelia went up more heavily, realizing for the first time that her skirts were weighing her down. In the relief of reaching the tunnel’s end, the significance of the fact that, for the last few upward yards, she had been wading through ankle-deep water escaped her.

Above her, the lantern’s candle guttered. For a tremulous second she watched it flutter like a moth before it went out.

The darkness then was like no other. A moonless night always held some reflection that the eye could adjust to; this was the negation of light, an absence of everything. Adelia heard the useless echo of her whimper tremble into it as if it came from somebody else.

There was a scratching and tinny sound, followed by a blast of profanity from the bishop of Saint Albans. “What are you doing?” she screamed at him.

“There’s metal up here. A hatch or whatever it is, it’s metal. What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to open the bastard.”

“Try feeling for a catch.”

“Oh, thank you, Doctor. I’ve done that. There isn’t one. Either the bugger’s locked in place or there’s some sort of cantilever on the other side that lifts it. I’m hitting it-somebody might hear us.”

Nobody would hear that. Adelia struggled to untangle the sword hanging from her waist and then held it up until it found Rowley’s boot. “Try this.”

She felt a fumbling hand take the weapon from her. There was a reverberating clang as metal hit against metal. That was better. But who was up there to hear? Only the couple who’d buried them-and they weren’t going to lift anything.

Adelia covered her ears as clang after clang made her head rock. Between every clash, Rowley shouted halloos and curses until she thought he’d go mad-or she would. Feeling each step with her hands, she climbed up until she touched his leg. “Let me try.”

He hauled her up beside him and she realized she was still clutching the box from the niche. She threw it down and raised her arms, encountering metal. She traced it with her fingertips-a shallow, inverted dome of iron. It was completely smooth, no protuberance that suggested a catch on this side of it.

“See?” Rowley gave her a push aside and resumed his assault. But that was it; she couldn’t see. Eyes were useless; there was only touch and hearing-and terror.

After an age of noise, she couldn’t bear it anymore. She reached out for his arm, found it, and held it. “Let’s go back to the cellar.”

The thought of a return battling through darkness… but there’d be space there, and comforting, normal things like barrels… it might be that Millie wasn’t dead and could let them out… something.

She said, remembering, “The hatch on the barrel chute was made of wood, perhaps we can hack our way up through it and shift whatever was on it.”

“Or at least drink ourselves to death.”